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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Last night I stood
in the top row of the 18,000-person Allstate Arena and watched CM Punk charge a
grown man in an electric wheelchair and proceed to smash his face in. It was
just another week on the World Wrestling Entertainment’s Monday Night RAW.

For the uneducated,
the weekly drama that ensues on RAW
is a televised wrestling affair. It travels from city to city, and culminates
each month in an absolutely swashbuckling pay-per-view event, whether it is Hell in a Cell or Summer Slam or the legendary Wrestlemania.
The world of professional wrestling is dynamic, engrossing, and a downright
riot. Sure, you can watch all of the action on the small screen, but going to a
live show is not only a must for fans, it is a necessity for enthusiasts of sports,
theater, and drama alike.

Chances are you
have been channel-surfing at some point or another and have stumbled across pro
wrestling. You might have glimpsed a jump from the ropes or a knee to the
stomach or one of the many glorious finishers toted by each fighter. You saw
the oversized muscles and the huge fireworks and the loud entrance music, and
you probably kept on flipping. Fine. Live your life. Wrestling certainly has a
niche that it looks to fill, but what you might not realize is that the niche
is bigger than you think—the sport (yeah, read it again—sport) has something to offer pretty much everyone, and when you go
and see it live and in person, it all becomes readily apparent.

The most apparent
thing about going to a WWE event is easily the crowd—there is no other audience
like it. Picture the two or three most passionate fans you have ever witnessed
at a football game or baseball game, etc. Now, take that insane degree of
fandom and apply it to every single one
of the thousands of people in attendance at a wrestling match. It is nothing
short of incredible to be in an arena with 18,000 people who know all of the
celebrations, all of the chants, all the right times to cheer, all the right
times to boo—there is no other environment like it. No matter who emerges from
the tunnel—it could be the reigning world champ or a lowly tag-team—everyone freaks
out as soon as that entrance music plays. The crowd knew that hometown hero CM
Punk was going to emerge before his face even appeared on the big screen, they
just heard Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” and began screaming for the
Chicagoan.

And it’s not just
rabid twenty-year-old dudes in there, either. Little kids holler for John Cena,
grizzled old-timers lead the way on the classic call for Rob! Van! Dam!, and
the little chubby Mexican mother in the row in front of me even clapped and
cheered to support her fellow countryman Alberto Del Rio. Everyone has a
favorite, everyone has the heroes (and villains) that they root for, and
everyone just gives being a fan all that they have. It is contagious in a way
that you just will not understand until, like me, you suddenly find yourself
joining in with thousands of other people in Daniel Bryan’s
kinda-lame-kinda-not “Yes!” chant.

Of course, with the
crowd bringing their A-game week in and week out, it would only fit that the
wrestling is on par. In short, it totally is. Look, the fact that it is all
choreographed and fake is obvious, but once you put that aside and treat what
you are watching as a pure performance, you completely forget about the farce. The
level of showmanship at a WWE event is unrivaled in sports. There are more
lights, more fireworks, bigger moments, higher stakes (if only because they
design it that way, but still), and more intensity in every fight than you can
imagine.

Even if you set
aside the wrestling, it is still an absolute blast to just see how the network
of storylines plays out. In what other area of athletics can you have a
champion lose their title in mere seconds? In the WWE, the Money in the Bank contracts make that possible. In what other area
of entertainment is such a large part of the fun bashing the leading men and
women in the industry, so much so that their cars are filled with cement and
their heads are shaved live in front of millions of viewers? In the WWE,
ripping on the McMahons is part of the culture.

In short, give
wrestling a try. It is a hilarious, passionate, and hugely entertaining world. The
personalities are huge, the fans are some of the best in modern popular
culture, and those divas? Please.

But wait—what happened
to CM Punk? Well, after the guy in the wheelchair had his goons throw the wrestler
through a table, the man declared the “best in the world” came back at the end
of the show, took a wooden rod from the announcer’s booth, and wailed on all
three of them, exacting his revenge in front of his home crowd. The opening
riff of that Living Colour song rang in your ears as you left.